First Posted: 3/30/2015

Age eight, I recall the day my father, raising his brow and curling his lip craned his neck toward my ear as I sat atop his lap. As though a gentle wind was passing, he whispered the most resounding design of life: “The sole purpose of our mortality is to experience that which makes our heart aflutter, that which joins one hand to another — to love, and be loved.”

Such a romantical idea, yet, as my days would grow old, in due course I would learn the ways of love, and find that while the purpose remained true, the task was never one of simplicity, but a tight scratch, indeed.

Much like my own father, Currer Bell, a novelist of Thornton, has been touched by similar proclivities. Bell’s recently published “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography,” portrays a young feminine narrator, Miss Jane Eyre, who is described as “poor, obscure, plain and little.” Naturally, a reader cannot help but feel an instant and deep affinity for her character. Both affected as we are bewitched by her presence, the reader, who Bell often speaks to, follows her from the beginning of her journey until the harrowing end. Be it what it would, there is love even among the most destitute of situations.

Miss Eyre flees the world she knew and soon finds herself at arm’s length of the wealthy and mysterious, yet kind gentleman, Sir Edward Fairfax Rochester. Much the dream of many ladyfolk of our time, Sir Rochester’s pristine sense of self is not without utmost controversy. Alas, perfection comes at a price, and as Ms. Eyre’s story unravels, so, too, shall the secret life of Mr. Rochester harrow up for all the world to see.

One must admit for a young fellow, Bell, writes with tender sensitivity exhibited by our much fairer sex. The finality of the work is evidence of such, and most favorable indeed. A few lines now recited from my lips, echoing off into marble corridors: “I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”

We, the reader, learn just as Miss Eyre, that the worst throes cannot singe nor separate love for long — but only delay the greatest of love that ever was, that ever could be. Admittedly, I warn my fellow countrymen, be weary of your counterparts, as they, too, will find themselves captivated by the beguiling nature of the characters. However, imagination, if not attended, may prove unhinged and you may then come to know of your darkest secret — your very own Bertha.